Chapter 88: Chapter 88: Manifestation: Drip Irrigation

Morning in Elarwyn did not bring the usual crystalline freshness of the Verdia highlands. Instead, the Spore-Fog—a sickly, pale-yellow shroud—clung stubbornly to the lower branches, making every breath feel heavy, metallic, and irritating to the back of the throat. It was an atmosphere of decay, a world slowly choking on its own failed magic.

However, in a secluded corner of the Hanging Fields, an area now cordoned off by Governor Caelmir’s personal guard, Dayat was preparing a revolution. He stood before a massive wooden vat, a container traditionally used to hold pure Mana-infused rainwater. But today, the liquid within was far more volatile.

Dayat took a deep, steadying breath, his eyes scanning the thousands of Elven observers watching from the higher boughs. Their eyes—a sea of emerald, amber, and gold—were fixed on him with a volatile mixture of desperate hope and profound hatred. To the traditionalists among them, what Dayat was doing was not “healing”; it was a calculated desecration of their sacred ground.

“Dola, initiate the pressure-flow calculations for a two-hundred-meter network. I need the drip rate to be absolutely constant. No clogging, no back-pressure spikes, and definitely no leaks. If a pipe bursts and floods the roots with concentrate, it’s game over,” Dayat commanded, his voice a low, steady anchor.

“Calculations complete, Master. A constant pressure of 1.5 bar at the distribution hub is required to maintain terminal efficiency at the edge of the secondary boughs,” Dola replied. Her voice was devoid of emotion, yet her sensors were at maximum sensitivity, monitoring the atmospheric instability.

Dayat nodded. He closed his eyes, centering his focus. He wasn’t visualizing a weapon this time—no firing pins, no rifled barrels. He was thinking of fluid dynamics, polymer elasticity, and precision filtration. The sapphire-purple light began to pulse in his palms, denser and more concentrated than usual.

From the empty air, coils of Polymer Drip-Lines began to manifest—long, translucent tubes made of a flexible, chemically-resistant polymer. Following them were hundreds of Precision Polymer Nozzles, each designed to deliver a specific, microscopic volume of liquid.

One by one, Dayat began to unroll the lines along the rows of blackened, withered Manaferum Sativa. He didn’t use a plow or a shovel. Instead, he knelt in the gray dust, using his bare hands to tuck the lines near the primary root-nodes of the dying plants. He worked with a meticulous, quiet intensity that seemed to baffle the onlookers.

“What is the meaning of this, Outlander?” Caelmir’s voice cut through the silence.

The Governor had arrived with a senior Druid in tow—a man whose face was a map of deep wrinkles and even deeper resentment. The old Elf clutched a gnarled wooden staff that vibrated with a faint, defensive mana.

“I’m installing an irrigation system, Caelmir. It’s a way to ensure your plants get exactly what they need without feeding the parasites in the soil,” Dayat answered without looking up, his fingers busy securing a nozzle.

The senior Druid stepped forward, his staff striking the wooden floor of the bough with a sharp thud. “You are piercing the sacred bark! You are strapping these… these dead snakes of strange material to a living god! This is the way of the Iron Cities! You are inviting a second calamity into Elarwyn!”

Dayat stood up, wiping the grime from his forehead with the sleeve of his moss-green jacket. He met the Druid’s hateful gaze with a calm, unyielding stare.

“This isn’t a calamity. It’s surgery,” Dayat said. “Your problem has always been that you treat this field like a thunderstorm. You flood everything with Mana, hoping the plants will soak it up. But the plants are sick. They can’t drink that much. The excess Mana just sits in the soil, acting as a luxury buffet for the Abyssal parasites. You’re literally drowning your crops and feeding their killers at the same time.”

“We offer the bounty of nature!” the Druid hissed.

“And nature is currently choking,” Dayat shot back. “Think of a dying bird, Druid. You wouldn’t throw it into the middle of a lake so it could ’drink,’ would you? It would drown. You would give it a single drop of nectar at a time, directly to its beak. That’s what these pipes are. They’re the nectar-droppers. They will deliver the medicine directly to the root-mouth, drop by drop, so there’s nothing left for the parasites to steal.”

Caelmir went silent, his mind racing to process the logic. He looked at the translucent pipes. Despite their alien, synthetic appearance, the principle of precision was a language even an Elf could eventually understand.

Chemical Synthesis: Poison or Cure?

Next came the most dangerous part of the operation. Dayat stood before the water vat. He signaled Dola to feed him the chemical composition data they had analyzed the previous night. In his old world, this was a standard fungicide—a mix of sulfur and copper sulfate. But here, Dayat had to manifest it as a concentrate that could bind with the ambient Mana of the water.

“Dola, begin the initialization of the Sulfur-Mana Compound,” Dayat whispered.

The violet light enveloped Dayat’s hands as he submerged them into the water. Pale yellow particles of sulfur began to materialize within the liquid, swirling like a storm of gold dust. Instantly, a sharp, pungent odor filled the air—the overwhelming scent of brimstone. The Druids above recoiled, some shouting that Dayat was summoning hellfire or dark alchemy.

“What is this stench?! It smells of death and scorched earth!” a guard cried out.

“It’s sulfur. In my world, it’s a cleanser,” Dayat replied, stirring the vat with a wooden paddle. “I’m blending it with a low-grade Elven alchemical concentrate to ensure the Abyssal parasites lose their grip on the Mana-channels.”

Dola stood on the opposite side of the tank, her eyes glowing with an intense blue light. She was monitoring the chemical reaction at a molecular level, ensuring the sulfur didn’t turn into a corrosive acid that would eat through the tree’s delicate cellulose. To Dola, this was a series of variables to be balanced; to Dayat, it was a death-defying tightrope walk. If he got the dosage wrong and the tree died, Caelmir’s Paladins would have his head on a pike before the sun set.

“Master, the compound ratio is stable at 4.2%. Toxicity levels against the host tree remain well below the danger threshold,” Dola reported.

“Good. Prime the pump,” Dayat ordered.

He manifested a manually-operated polymer pump, powered by a small Mana-crystal as a motor. The pale yellow fluid began to flow, pulsing through the translucent lines like the blood of a synthetic god. Dayat, Dola, and Caelmir followed the flow as the liquid traveled down the boughs, visible through the clear walls of the pipes.

Drip… drip… drip…

The first droplets fell directly onto the infected root-bases of the blackened Sativa.

The Guardian’s Response

The moment the sulfur-Mana solution touched the contaminated soil, the reaction was violent and immediate. Thin wisps of purple smoke curled up from the ground, followed by a faint, high-pitched hissing sound—the collective death rattle of billions of microscopic Abyssal parasites being burned away by Dayat’s chemical agent. They thrived on magic, but they had no defense against the raw, caustic properties of Earth’s chemistry.

Suddenly, a massive tremor shook the ground beneath them. The entire Hanging Field seemed to sway, a deep groan echoing through the wood of the boughs.

“What have you done?!” Caelmir panicked, his hand flying to the hilt of his wooden sword.

Dayat didn’t answer. He was staring at the main trunk of Elarwyn’s World Tree. The leaves high above, which had been dull and gray for months, began to shiver in unison. A long, drawn-out sound, like a massive sigh of relief, echoed through the branches. At the base of the treated plants, the blackened rot began to recede, replaced by a faint, hopeful glow of emerald light.

“The tree… it’s breathing,” Caelmir whispered, his eyes welling with tears. “It doesn’t feel like a violation. It feels… clean.”

Dayat allowed himself a small, tired smile. “That’s because the weight on its back is gone. It can finally pull nutrients again without a billion thieves stealing it in transit.”

Amidst the quiet celebration, Kancil was busy. Dressed in his new leather vest, the boy was patrolling the perimeter of the irrigation lines like a hawk. He wasn’t just looking at the plants; he was watching the Druids. He saw the looks on their faces—some were in awe, but others looked furious. They weren’t angry because the plants were dying; they were angry because a human had succeeded where their gods had failed.

“Big Bro! All clear on the north side!” Kancil yelled, waving his staff. But even as he smiled, he felt a prickling sensation on the back of his neck. Someone was watching from the shadows of the Kenanga groves.

Night fell over Elarwyn, but Dayat couldn’t sleep. He sat in a makeshift wooden shack at the edge of the fields, while Dola stood outside as a silent sentry. Her sensors were tuned to the slightest movement of the air.

“Master, I am detecting irregular Mana fluctuations in Sector 4,” Dola’s voice crackled in Dayat’s ear-comm.

Dayat was up in an instant. He sprinted toward Sector 4, followed by a startled Kancil. When they reached the site, Dayat knelt by his irrigation lines.

“Damn it,” he hissed.

The main polymer distribution line had been severed. The cut was surgically clean, angled perfectly—the work of a razor-sharp blade or a highly concentrated gust of wind. The pale yellow sulfur solution was leaking onto the wooden floor, creating a pungent, wasted puddle.

“This wasn’t an accident, Big Bro,” Kancil whispered, examining the severed ends. “It’s too clean. Someone wanted the medicine to stop.”

Dola knelt beside him, her eyes scanning the residue on the pipe. “Detecting high-frequency wind particle residue. This was the result of a mid-tier wind spell. The perpetrator used an Aeroblade enchantment to sever the line from a distance.”

Dayat clenched his fist, his knuckles turning white. The arrogance of the Elves was far more dangerous than he had anticipated. There were those in Elarwyn who would rather see their city starve to death than see a human save it.

“The traitor is getting desperate,” Dayat muttered, staring into the dark, rustling depths of the forest. “They saw that it worked, and they’re terrified of the change.”

He turned to see Caelmir arriving, the Governor’s face pale with shock as he realized his own people had sabotaged the cure.

“Caelmir,” Dayat said, his voice as cold as a winter morning. “You told me Elarwyn was under strict guard. Yet my lines were cut by a wind spell right under your Paladins’ noses. From tomorrow, I’m taking total authority over the security of this site. I’m going to install my own protection. And you… you find out which of your Druids wasn’t in their barracks tonight.”

Dayat turned back to his broken pipes, already planning a defense that the Elves wouldn’t understand: electronic security in a world of magic.

Source: Webnovel.com, updated by NovelKeep